miércoles, 26 de junio de 2013

The thirteenth biennial EBS conference, hosted by
Margaret Connolly and Julian Luxford of the St Andrews Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, will be held at the University of St Andrews from July 4 to July 7, 2013, with an optional trip to Edinburgh scheduled for July 8.
A special exhibition, 'From the Vaults', put on for the Early Book
Society conference in the King James Library will feature items from
the University of St Andrews Library’s Department of Special
Collections. In Edinburgh we will visit the National Library of Scotland
which houses the Bohun Psalter, the Murthly Hours, the Auchinleck
manuscript and one of two extant illustrated MSS of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life. The Edinburgh exhibition will be organized by Kenneth Dunn, Curator of MSS, at the NLS.

The Annual
Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies provides a convenient
summer venue in North America for scholars in all disciplines to present
papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in
interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the symposium is to promote
serious scholarly investigation on all topics and in all disciplines of
the medieval and early modern worlds.

The IMC seeks to provide an interdisciplinary forum
for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. Paper and session
proposals on any topic related to the European Middle Ages are welcome.
However, every year, the IMC chooses a specific special thematic strand
which - for 2014 - is 'Empire'.

Although the last western Roman emperor was
deposed in 476, the Roman Empire continued to shape imagination even
when it had ceased to play a major political role. Throughout the Middle
Ages, 'Empire' suggested a claim to universal lordship. The concept of imperium implied
not only the ability and power to exercise authority over others, but
could also be used to distinguish spiritual from secular spheres of
power. There was also the concept of 'informal empire', a term often
employed by modern historians to describe a group of distinct
territories held together by ties of commerce, ideology, dynastic
traditions, or conquest.

'Informal empires' were forged by King Cnut in
the 11th century and by the rulers of Aragon in the 14th. The papacy,
the western Empire, and Byzantium all claimed to inherit the mantle of
Rome, while the Caliphates expressed a similar claim to universal
leadership. The meaning of imperium, in turn, became a central
issue in medieval scholarship, whether in scholastic theology, medieval
philosophy, canon law, or the writing of history and literature. No type
of empire was unable to avoid challenges (and challengers). Each type
exercised a profound influence not only on politics, but on every aspect
of daily life: on commerce and trade as well as the environment,
cultural practice, social structures and organisation, the movement of
ideas and people. Empires and their rulers could also be products of
political and cultural memory and myth-making, with Charlemagne, Arthur,
and Troy perhaps among the more famous examples.

'Empire' was not limited to the regions
surrounding the medieval Mediterranean. Universal monarchy was central
to the self-representation of imperial China, while informal empires
rose and fell in Africa as well as in Asia and pre-Columbian America.
Christian, Confucian, Buddhist, and Islamic scholars discussed 'Empire'
in all its varieties and forms.

Empire was a universal phenomenon, and thus
calls for sustained exploration across a wide range of disciplines, and
geographical and chronological areas of expertise.

Points of discussion could include:

• The role of settlers, merchants, rulers, and others in creating and fashioning empire

• The decline and fall of empires

• The typology of empire

• The governance and organisation of empires

• The experience of empire by individuals and communities

• The representation of Empire in music, art, literature, and material culture

• Traditions of empire, their use and development

• Theoretical models of Empire: Medieval and modern

• Concepts and practices of empire in the Islamic world, Africa, America, and Asia

• The role of imperium in medieval philosophy, theology, and literature

• The role of universal authority in medieval thought and practice

• The influence of medieval concepts and practices of empire on their post-medieval successors

Paper proposals must be submitted by 31 August 2013; session proposals must be submitted by 30 September 2013.

sábado, 22 de junio de 2013

This conference seeks to explore and re-evaluate the forms and
functions of networks and communities for men in the middle ages. We
invite papers which consider these in relation to professed religious
men and/or laymen of any faith.

Scholars are increasingly engaging with what religion, belief and
devotion meant to men as men. Networks and communities both shape and
express individual, relational, and collective identities, and therefore
shed useful light on the experiences, perceptions or depiction of
medieval men. This is the second conference under the auspices of The
Bishop’s Eye Network – a research network between the Universities of
Huddersfield and Lincoln. The first, ‘Religious Men in the Middle Ages’,
was held at Huddersfield in 2012.

We invite abstracts from scholars at all career stages working on the
interplay between men in networks and communities; how they are
constituted and what they mean. Papers may focus on homosocial networks
and communities or male involvement in female networks and communities.

Topics for discussion could include networks and communities defined by:

Family and kinship

Intellectual connections (e.g. textual communities, scholasticism)

Profession and Occupation

Orders, universities, monastic, mendicant, and secular houses

Patronage and affinity

Geography and location

Guilds and confraternities

Military experience (e.g. comitati, warbands, orders of chivalry)

Friendship and emotional bonds (e.g. amicitia, love)

Ethnicity and inter-cultural encounters

Papers could consider individuals or groups from any faith, religious
tradition, monotheistic, pagan, or heretical, or could focus on men who
rejected religion and faith. We encourage proposals from scholars
working in any relevant field: history, literature and language, art
history, musicology, archaeology, etc., and from any medieval period (c.
500–early 1500s) or geographical setting.

The conference will be held at the Brayford Campus, which is a few
minutes’ walk from the train station, and within easy reach of the
cathedral and castle. The conference organisers are Dr Philippa Hoskin
and Dr Joanna Huntington. For further information on Lincoln visit http://www.visitlincoln.com/ (A conference website is under construction).

We hope to publish a volume of essays based on a selection of the papers delivered at the conference.

Proposals, of 200-300 words, for papers of 20 minutes, should be submitted tobishopseye2014@gmail.com by 30 September 2013.

martes, 11 de junio de 2013

The Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The
University of Liverpool is delighted to announce that the Seventh
International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle will take place at
the University of Liverpool, 7th – 10th July 2014.

The aim of the seventh conference is to follow the broad outline of
the previous six conferences, allowing scholars who work on different
aspects of the medieval chronicle (historical, literary, art-historical)
to meet, announce new findings and projects, present new methodologies,
and discuss the prospects for collaborative research.

The function of chronicles in society; contexts historical, literary
and social; patronage; reception of the text(s); literacy; orality;
performance.

The form of the chronicle

The language(s) of the chronicle; inter-relationships of chronicles
in multiple languages; prose and/or verse chronicles; manuscript
traditions and dissemination; the arrangement of the text.

The chronicle and the representation of the past

How chronicles record the past; the relationship with ‘time’; how the
reality of the past is encapsulated in the literary form of the
chronicle; how chronicles explain the past; motivations given to
historical actors; the role of the Divine.

Art and Text in the chronicle

How art functions in manuscripts of chronicles; do manuscript
illuminations illustrate the texts or do they provide a different
discourse that amplifies, re-enforces or contradicts the verbal text;
origin and production of illuminations; relationships between author(s),
scribe(s) and illuminator(s).

CALL FOR PAPERS

Papers in English, French or German are invited on any aspect of
Medieval Chronicle. Papers will be allocated to sections to give
coherence and contrast; authors should identify the main theme to which
their paper relates. Papers read at the conference will be strictly
limited to twenty (20) minutes in length. The deadline for abstracts is
Monday 21 October 2013 (maximum length one (1) side A4 paper, including
bibliography). Please email your abstract.

The
program committee invites 250-word abstracts of proposed twenty-minute papers
on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, music and
religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Interdisciplinary work
is particularly appropriate to the conference’s broad historical and
disciplinary scope. Planned sessions are welcome; please see the new guidelines here.

In
memory of the conference’s founder Lee Daniel Snyder (1933–2012), we are
pleased to announce the establishment of the Snyder Prize, which will be
awarded for the first time in 2014. The prize carries an honorarium of $400 and
will be given to the best paper presented at the conference by a junior
scholar. Further details are available at the conference website.

The
conference will be held on the campus of New College of Florida, the honors
college of the Florida state system. The college, located on Sarasota Bay, is
adjacent to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, which will offer tours
arranged for conference participants. Sarasota is noted for its beautiful
public beaches, theater, food, art and music. Average temperatures in March are
a pleasant high of 77F (25C) and a low of 57F (14C).

More
information will be posted on the conference website as it becomes available,
including submission guidelines, prize details, plenary speakers, conference
events, and area attractions.

viernes, 7 de junio de 2013

It
is with great delight that the DigiPal team at the Department of
Digital Humanities (King's College London), announce their third
Symposium. We've built up a scholarly camaraderie over the last two
years and much look forward to our annual opportunity to discuss and
debate the computer-assisted study of medieval handwriting and
manuscripts. Of course, we'll need some papers. So…

How to propose a paperPapers
of 20 minutes in length are invited on any aspect of digital approaches
to the study of medieval handwriting and manuscripts.

The topics below might help guide potential submissions:

• terminology for describing handwriting• visualisation of manuscript evidence and data• meaning and mining in palaeography• automatic letter-form identification• methods for dating/localising script• crowd-sourcing in palaeography• the practical and theoretical consequences of the use of digital images• examples of research that would benefit from a Digital Humanities (or DigiPal) approach

The above are only serving suggestions, so please don't feel limited to these topics.